The United States and Taiwan this week launched a new education initiative aimed at expanding English and Chinese teaching cooperation to meet the demand for Chinese and English language learning on both sides of the aisle. AIT says the new initiative expands U.S.-Taiwan Chinese-English educational opportunities, preserves academic freedom, and “strengthens Taiwan’s role as a provider of Chinese language instruction in the U.S. and around the world at a time when Confucius Institutes are closing in the U.S. and around the world.”
“At the launch of the US-Taiwan Education Initiative on Thursday (Dec. 3) at the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, AIT Taipei Director Brent Christensen and Taiwan Foreign Minister Wu Zhao-xiang announced that this cooperative initiative will be the first step in comprehensive U.S.-Taiwan education cooperation, and that the two sides will continue to expand two-way Chinese and English language teaching cooperation, promote exchanges between educational institutions, and deepen friendship and partnership between the younger generations of the U.S. and Taiwan.
The background of the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative is based on two trends, one of which is that many universities around the world, including the United States, are closing their Confucius Institutes “because of their role in censorship and malicious influence activities in the People’s Republic of China,” said Kazuhiro. “Taiwan can and should play an important role in satisfying that interest,” he said, noting that the United States is already encouraging students to choose Taiwan as their Chinese language destination.
He said the U.S. is already encouraging students to choose Taiwan as a destination for their Chinese language studies and is also examining whether there are more opportunities to move U.S. government-sponsored Chinese language programs to Taiwan. To that end, AIT’s 2020 annual funding for the Fulbright program in Taiwan has been increased by NT$6 million.
A second trend is Taiwan’s increased commitment to English education. President Tsai Ing-kai has announced that Taiwan will be fully bilingual by 2030, which means that students and young people in Taiwan who wish to travel outside of Taiwan have the option to do so anywhere in the world, and the U.S. is pleased to support this goal by providing English language instruction, Li said.
Li emphasized that both trends are based on the same principle that “young people should be able to pursue academic and professional opportunities in an environment free from coercion and censorship,” and in this context, the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative will provide a platform to expand cooperation between the two sides in pursuit of mutual interests and values.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said in a statement that the “U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative” is a milestone in U.S.-Taiwan education cooperation, “the first time the two sides have established systematic and institutionalized cooperation in the field of education,” and that Taiwan has the confidence and ability to play an important role in U.S. Chinese language education and “provide a free, democratic, and diverse Chinese language learning environment for American students,” and that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs looks forward to working with relevant U.S. ministries in the future to continue to deepen the U.S.-Taiwan partnership and mutual interests.
Prior to the physical ceremony, U.S. and Taiwanese government officials held the first-ever online dialogue on the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative on Wednesday morning (EST), which was attended by U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary for Asia and the Pacific David Stilwell, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Mitchell Zais, Taiwan’s Deputy Secretary of the National Security Council Hsu Sijian, Taiwan’s Deputy Secretary of Education Liu Mengqi, and Deputy Foreign Minister Tseng Hou-jen.
According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the two sides discussed the U.S. demand for Chinese language education in the U.S., promoting cooperation between Taiwan and the U.S. at the federal and local levels, promoting Taiwan’s “Chinese Language Test” in the U.S., and Taiwan’s promotion of the “2030 Bilingual National Policy.
Following the dialogue, AIT Executive Director Ingrid Larson and Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. Amy Hsiao signed a five-year “Memorandum of Understanding on International Education Cooperation” that afternoon on behalf of both governments, witnessed online by U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs Marie Royce and Deputy Secretary of Education Marie Saez.
In a video released by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Blue Ying stated that the Taiwan Relations Act states that the culture and friendship between the United States and Taiwan should continue to grow, so the two sides also had a meaningful dialogue that day about how to enhance exchanges and language learning for each other’s people. mutual understanding.”
Taiwan is the seventh largest source of international students in the U.S., with 23,000 Taiwanese students currently studying at U.S. universities, Xiao said. “Taiwan is also attracting more and more U.S. students to study in Taiwan, where American students can enjoy academic freedom, an open society and multiculturalism while receiving world-class training in Chinese language studies. 48 percent can reflect that.”
She said the long-standing U.S.-Taiwan partnership is based on shared values and interests, and “there is no better way to strengthen the foundation of this friendship than to encourage more student exchanges on both sides.”
According to AIT’s memorandum of understanding, projects include strengthening and expanding existing two-way educational exchanges, such as adding a Chinese language teaching component to the Fulbright program, increasing the number of Taiwanese Chinese language teachers sent to the U.S. to teach, supporting Taiwan’s promotion of the Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL) program, and promoting the use of the TOCFL. (TOCFL), exploring opportunities to integrate U.S.-Taiwanese English and Chinese language teachers and teaching resources, strengthening English teacher training content to meet the needs of the “2030 Bilingual Education Initiative,” and promoting Taiwan’s educational and cultural resources to encourage more U.S. students to study and exchange in Taiwan. In addition to the Gilman Scholarships, the U.S. government also sponsors programs such as the Fulbright Program, the National Security Language Initiative for Youth, and the National Security Language Initiative for Youth.
In addition to the Gilman Scholarship, U.S. government-sponsored programs for Chinese language learning include the Fulbright Program, the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), and the Critical Language Scholarship Program.
The U.S. State Department announced in mid-August that the Confucius Institutes in the U.S. are recognized as foreign missions affiliated with the Chinese government, and Secretary of State Pompeo stated in an interview in mid-October that he hoped all Confucius Institutes in the U.S. would be closed by the end of the year.
In a recent letter to U.S. institutions of higher education, the U.S. Departments of State and Education pointed out that the authoritarian Chinese regime’s influence on U.S. campuses is growing worse by the day, and that while Confucius Institutes are billed as Chinese language and cultural learning centers, there is growing evidence that they are also tools of China’s malicious influence and Communist Party propaganda on U.S. campuses.
However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian alleges that it is U.S. politicians, including Pompeo, who “smear” the Confucius Institutes, interfere with their normal operation in the U.S., and “deliberately undermine cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation between the two countries” out of ideological prejudice and political self-interest.
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